TV preview: Stunned viewers can start anew

Not since the whole "Who shot J.R.?" excitement on the first version of Dallas has a season-ender been the subject of as much chatter as the first-season finale of The Killing on AMC.

Not since the whole “Who shot J.R.?” excitement on the first version of Dallas has a season-ender been the subject of as much chatter as the first-season finale of The Killing on AMC.

It wasn’t just that the show, based on a murky Danish TV thriller, ended with no solution to the murder of teenager Rosie Larsen: It was that viewers felt played, and rightly so.

Yes, you can end a season with a surprise, but if viewers feel manipulated or used, their initial interest can turn to spiteful rejection quicker than you can say, “Hand me the remote.”

‘Game of Thrones’

The Killing

wasn’t the only show to end its first season with a bang: HBO’s massive (and massively expensive) hit

Game of Thrones

also shocked a lot of viewers when the perceived lead character, Ned Stark, played by Sean Bean, lost his head.

Those who have read George R.R. Martin’s medieval fantasy books knew that Ned was doomed, but the rest of the viewing audience was aghast. After all, you don’t kill off a lead character in a series unless the series is going to end.

But while both endings might have surprised viewers, HBO got through Ned’s death relatively unscathed, while AMC went into triage mode. Both shows start second go-rounds on Sunday night.

Thrones is blessed with a horde of other compelling, murderous and sexy characters to maintain our interest in Ned’s absence. Of course, that has always been the challenge of watching Game of Thrones as well: keeping the seven kingdoms straight.

With Ned gone, the second season is slightly more difficult to fathom because he provided stability. He had the job of being the king’s hand and was more of a family man than some of the more barbaric characters. We got to know Ned; his wife, Catelyn (Michelle Fairley); and their kids. Now that he is gone, it’s up to his eldest son, Robb (Richard Madden), to seek justice for his father’s death.

‘The Killing’

If the first season of The Killing was all about who might have killed Rosie, the second season starts off trying to eliminate suspects. That should keep everyone busy all year, because over the course of the first year’s 13 episodes, almost everyone in the cast seemed to be a person of interest at one point or another.

And that’s precisely why people were so annoyed when the year ended with “none of the above.”& amp; amp; lt; /p>

Whoever wasn’t permanently turned off by the end of the first year will tune into the two-hour premiere of the second season with some wariness.

They might be glad to know that some potential suspects (I won’t say how many) get cleared early on. And, like the original Danish series, the American version will reveal the killer at the end of the new season.

If the series wasn’t as otherwise sterling as The Killing is, we might lose patience. But it benefits from performances by the superb Mireille Enos as detective Sarah Linden and Joel Kinnaman as her partner,

Holder.

Notwithstanding the cat-and-mouse plotting, we watch The Killing because of the superb writing and attention to character detail in the scripts by series executive producer Veena Sud and others.

Those elements are still there this year, which is why even disgruntled viewers should give The Killing a second chance.